According to the Fair Labor Standards Act, when a state internally has no laws regarding overtime pay, then federal law applies. For Georgia, overtime work and overtime pay are administered through both state and federal regulations. But what are state and federal laws on overtime? This blog will give you an overview of overtime in Georgia. If you believe that you were wrongly denied overtime pay you had earned, please contact an Atlanta wage and hour law attorney right away.

Interactions Between State and Federal Regulations

Taking a look at how Georgia handles minimum wage laws, we can start to appreciate the back-and-forth interaction between state and federal law in the Peach State.

The Fair Labor Standards Act sets the federal minimum wage for covered employees at $7.25, and so for a certain sector of Georgians, the minimum wage is effectively $7.25. However, Georgia does have a state minimum wage, which is $5.15. If an employee isn’t covered under the FLSA, and some are not, then they would receive the state minimum wage instead.

Similarly, while FLSA-covered employees may receive the federal overtime rate of 1.5 times their hourly pay after working 40 hours in a week, employees not covered by the FLSA are not allowed to work overtime.

Federal Overtime Regulations in Georgia

Similarly, while FLSA-covered employees may receive the federal overtime rate of 1.5 times their hourly pay after working 40 hours in a week, employees not covered by the FLSA are not allowed to work overtime.

Therefore, on the question of whether your employer can obligate you to work overtime, the answer is yes so long as:

• You are an FLSA-covered employee.
• Your employee pays you the overtime rate after you have worked 40 hours in a week.

According to the Georgia Department of Labor, your employer does not need your approval before requiring that you work overtime. Nor does Georgia have any limit on how many overtime hours your employee can tell you to work. Your employer would be legally allowed to fire you if you refused to work overtime while they offered overtime pay, no matter how many hours your employer demanded you work. Furthermore, overtime pay is calculated by the week and not by the day. Even if you work more than 8 hours in a day, so long as you don’t work more than 40 hours in a week, you are not entitled to overtime pay.